The Glorious Rhythm of Pulsing Blood
by silentmusic16
Summary: "Oh, how the glorious rhythm of pulsing blood can compel a man to do anything and everything imaginable!" AU (of course).


**As per usual, I really wanted to try out a new style. And with my current obsession with existentialism, I thought that I might as well kill two birds with one stone and write a fanfic. Kind of.**

**Enjoy~**

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It was the third time that week that I had held that dark pistol to my head. Circles where the barrel went seemed to create near-permanent indents in my temples from how hard I was pressing it into my flesh. My finger trembled on the trigger and only millimeters separated me from death. From the sweet dark void fated to all living creatures. As usual I couldn't do it. Sprawled on my back on the scratched wooden floor I closed my eyes and breathed in the musty air of my closed apartment. Who was I, to think I could just choose to die. I wasn't nearly important enough. Only important people could choose their fate like that; a nobody like me had to sit restlessly on the conveyor belt of life.

After some time passed (how much I didn't know, but the Sun, which had started straight above in the sky, was nearly setting) I raised myself from the floor and went to my answering machine. A number (13) blinked in red. 13 calls I didn't take since the beginning of the week and my self imposed house arrest. Most were from _her_. That doe-eyed wonder, that worrywart, that beautiful mystery. I smiled despite myself; here I was, trying to convince myself to die, while there was still a part of me attached to my very own muse. Poems I wrote for her were scattered around my apartment, their corners showing out of old books and from under objects piled in the corner and there were even a few smoothed out in my pillow case. I had shown her but one of these, a poem entitled "Ophelia, my bride", She enjoyed it, to an extent, the way one enjoys whiskey; she found it bitter but warm. I opted not to listen to any of the messages lest I change my mind completely.

As for why I was so intent on killing myself, well, it was rather simple: to experience death itself! From a young age I had been obsessed with the morbid and macabre after I had found my mother (a struggling literary mind like my own) dead, wrists slit with rivers of blood running down the length of her arms and down to the floor where it pooled into a great ocean. There was a small rhythm to the pulsing sanguine liquid as it flowed out of her body. I was only 8 and the image never left my mind's eye, never once grew sepia in tone, never lost its interesting hues the way even the most beloved memories eventually do. I had been given a number of psychological tests and talks after that event and the diagnosis was that I'd be fine, that (surprising for an 8 year old) I could grasp the concept of death and its many consequences. But those tests didn't understand the direction my mind veered off in as I grew up. I became enamored with death, and eventually figured out that the only true way to experiment with it was to experience the process in and of itself. Perhaps that's why I didn't want to die using a gun; death was nearly instantaneous when a hot speeding bullet blanked one's mind. Maybe my mother's way was the right one. That I could even wonder this spurned me on further. (As far as I knew) I had but one physical death and to waste that chance seemed a mortal sin.

Don't believe that I hadn't faced any mental trauma from my discovery at age 8. Of course I did, it's only natural to do so. Being faced with accepting death at such an age, especially the death of one's mother, tears away at an innocence normally lost quietly as it hides away behind more pressing innocenses and virtues. I had a near existential crisis (or something closely related) where I struggled to realize what death itself meant and how I would inevitably face it too. It was just before my psychological evaluations that I found my temporary answer and thus "beat the system". But that question came back to me as I grew, as did the observations of life's absurdity, of its inherent meaninglessness. For those reasons I nearly hung myself from a tree at 16, saved only by the sight of that girl as she herself nearly died; she had been hit by a speeding car which didn't stop for a moment to see if the victim was fine. I ran to her, noose still around my neck, and checked on the girl. She was breathing, at the very least, and had a weak pulse. With the impulse one must feel to murder someone who gravely hurts them or their pride I called for help and stayed by her unconscious side the entire time, leaving only once for barely a minute to free myself of the noose and hide it from the quickly approaching authorities.

For 2 days I didn't move from the chair next to her bed in the hospital, and when it was apparent that she'd survive I quietly took my leave never having said a word to the girl (as she was still unconscious). 2 weeks later she was released, and personally brought me a gift (a small bonsai tree still in my possession even 4 years later) despite that she was clearly still injured and had to get around in a wheel chair until her leg and ribs could fully heal. I thought the gesture was sweet enough, though I couldn't understand why it was such a big deal that I had saved her life; life is a precious thing and it's in the interest of all beings to preserve it as necessary. Her life was just as important as my own. I was grateful, however, that the accident had prematurely stopped my suicide attempt; upon further introspection during the 2 days I stayed in the hospital with her, I realized that I just wasn't in the right mindset to end it all. Not yet, anyway. And thus, our relationship, built on a failed suicide and a hit-and-run was formed. The more we spent time together, the more affectionate I became towards her and her simple ways. By _simple_, I mean only without waste and with common sense, not that she was stupid. She wished not for vain things or wealth, but for comfort and security and small, natural happiness. Needing some solid light, a guiding voice in my life, I was glad to follow her lead and if that meant being with her in a romantic relationship I couldn't complain in the slightest.

4 happy years passed on the surface, but underneath, hidden like a flounder in the sand, those bubbling questions and wonders about life began to stir yet again. It was worrying that I began spending so much time alone in my apartment trying to figure out the secrets of life through books and philosophical studies and my own experiences. Sometimes I wouldn't come out for days, instead spending every waking moment pouring over Sartre and Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky. She'd come over and take me out during these times and I was glad to have someone to pull me from that black hole of my home. And yet, my mind would continue to wander through so many questions even when I was with her. If we slept together, I'd hold her close as she slept and wonder how she'd react if I were to die then and there and, as she awoke in the morning, how sleeping on a cold dead husk would make her feel. Probably horrible, I concluded (and it bothered me so much that I couldn't know for certain).

That period of increasingly depraved thoughts and self-inflicted solitary confinement ultimately lead to that full week of not leaving my home, not answering my calls, not allowing anyone in or out, and the 3 failed attempts at simply ending my life, ceasing to be, canceling my existence. But now that almost a week passed and I hadn't done it, I was sure that my death (at least, my death administered by myself) would not be coming so soon. Not even the fleeting thoughts of finishing my life in the same vein (pun intended) as my dear, dear mother. No, I wasn't going to die and that was final. For a while, anyway. I finished off that Sunday by lying motionless on the floor surrounded by darkness illuminated solely by a single lamp in the far corner of my small living room. The darkness was filled with ghosts and monsters, otherwise known as memories and fears. Memories of my mother and her suicide. Fears that I would never be able to find out what was beyond life if I continued to enjoy it. And, in a way, that was the true problem. Deep down, past even my deepest existential curiosities, my desire for death was based in part by an unhappiness that plagued me, despite how far down I buried it. My mother had abandoned me and perversely ruined my mind with the image of death, my first image of death and one that shaped my future from there on out. I was angry at her and, at the same time, angry at myself for being unable to understand why she left and why she gifted me with her mind, the mind of a poet and the mind of an existentialist, because I acquired neither from my father (who was much like _her_, in that he valued the simple over the complex and feelings of cool comfort over fiery passion). It was all so disturbing and engrossing that I hardly noticed the morning arrive almost mockingly, bright and happy and full of chirping bird and a slightly rustling breeze.

The first place I went after exiting my near-tomb was _her_ apartment. Only a few blocks away from mine, she lived in a white building with small black windows uniformly adorning each and every face of the apartment complex. On the top floor and in the South-facing corner apartment, I could almost make out the shape of her body pacing back and forth. Always would she be a worrier by heart and I could only chuckle. I didn't even knock before I entered, instead using the key she gave me I waltzed right in. For the first time I saw anger well up in her eyes.

"Where've you been?!"

"Home" I answered.

So why didn't you let me in when I knocked? Why'd you make me worry? I thought you were dead!" she exclaimed, by then more relieved than angry. I actually laughed a bit when she said she'd wondered if I were dead; if only she knew the truth!

Aside from a quick mention when we first began spending time with one another, I had never mentioned my mother's death, nor my perfect, framed memory of it, to my girl. It was only natural, then, for me to also not talk of my own existential crisis, my own obsession with death, lest she be given one more thing to worry over. I hadn't even told my father and he was the one who found me absorbing the sight of my mother into my mind forever. The quest for death and its nature was a solitary one, a road traveled alone by everybody and everything that ever lived. Most travel it unconsciously, without thinking about it, until they stumble upon Death on that dusty road, where he extends a bony hand and leads them into the great unknown. Some, however, seek that old friend of Life, and still others are just thrust into his hands and he has no idea what to do with those people than what he does with everyone. I understood that everyone I know would one day die. The only death I couldn't understand was my own.

We went out for dinner that night, talked like old times and whatnot. She seemed so very relieved that I was okay and at that time I could truly say that I had missed her during my week long prison sentence. Hers was a face I could love, her personality one I could live with comfortably. But that' was all if I chose to live. The only thing that survived longer than love was death, because even the lover who mourns for his dead love eventually dies as well, and then neither can yearn for each other. I still, at that point, hadn't decided yet if I was going to continue living until death, or search for him myself. We spent that evening together in bed and with my head on her chest and her head on my shoulder I could clearly listen in on the rhythmic beating of that small heart of hers, It was a beautiful melody and in my head I conducted a poem to it, or more of a song really. I didn't write it or even try to remember it, however, because it was an ephemeral thing, trapped in that time like all of her past heartbeats, pings of life she'd never regain. Neither would I. No one ever does.

My dream that night consisted of my mother's image, with my girlfriend in her place and the sound of her heartbeats in sync with the slow pulse of blood that exited from my mother's arms. Seeing her eyes, dead and cold and glassy, sent such a chill down my spine that I awoke from the nightmare wide-eyed and sleepless. I spent the rest of the night staring at _her_, making sure that she absolutely was alive. What was I to do when this girl, someone I saved from the brink of death, reached it anyway? How was I to cope with such a failure; I had made a non-verbal promise to keep her safe when I found her as the victim of a car accident and her survival drove my own survival. But knowing, finally realizing that she too would die even after my actions, was like one of those headshots I forced myself not to commit. I had ultimately failed. The doctors had ultimately failed. There was nothing more to life than death no matter the time or place. For her sake, not mine, I hoped with all my heart that I could find a way for her to live forever despite the futility of that request. And that was the moment I ceased in my own pursuit of death - to find out how I could keep her living forever. Oh, how the glorious rhythm of pulsing blood can compel a man to do anything and everything imaginable!

Twisted, like a spring wound too tight, my mind already began racing with so many new poems of the first immortal, my beauty, my creation. Once I achieved my goal I could end my life and finally experience death and what lied beyond life. But first and foremost was her immortality. I'd find it somehow, I knew, even if it killed me.

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**Reviews and criticism are both greatly appreciated for this, as well as my past 2 uploads. I really need some feedback to know where I have to improve and whatnot.**

**Thanks.**


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